Link Building for Small and Local Businesses

If you read a blog post about link building recently, the odds are pretty good you’ve read about content marketing, info-graphics, or RCS. These are all great. They work. They bring more traffic and links to your site and can help build your brand. For those you who run or market small and local businesses, odds are these strategies are not within reach. Either there are no resources or time.

Where does this leave you then? Though it seems like your options are big expensive content based strategies or low value (at best) strategies like directories, blog comments, and link networks, there are other options. Below are 7 tactics that don’t require extensive resources to implement.

Local Newspapers

Everyone wants a link from the New York Times or the Huffington Post right? If you’re a local business, you really don’t need that strong of links. A couple links from your local newspaper will usually provide significant value. There are a couple ways you can do this. The first is to do a press release. Often times local newspapers will run press releases for local businesses online. Write up a press release the next time you offer a new service, move, get a new product line, hire a new manager, sponsor an event, and, well you get the idea.

A second tactic you can use is to be featured as an expert in a story – it will be easier to connect with a local journalist than someone writing for a national paper. Reach out to them with a story idea that they can cover or let them know if they ever need a source for a story in your market that you’d be happy to help. Remember, you want to make their life easier, not harder, so what can you do to get a link and make their life easier?

Search for Mentions

If people are talking about you, hopefully they are linking to your site. If they aren’t email them, or better give them a call, and ask if they would mind linking to you with your name (or business name) in the post or article.

There are a couple ways to go about this. The old way is to create a Google Alert for your name. Once you set this up, you will get emails whenever your name is mentioned. There can be significant lag time though.

Remember when you set it up to put your name in quotes, this will search for your name exactly.

The new way is to monitor for mention with SEOmoz’s new Fresh Web Explorer. This is a great new tool that scans the web for mentions of your brand and name. While this only recently came out there are a lot of great resources on this. Below are some blog posts that should get you started to finding brand mentions to turn into links:

Local Maps

You can use Google Maps to build links really easily. Simply create a custom map with points of interest on it. Then grab the embed code. Now edit the embed code and remove the link to Google maps and replace it with a link to your site. Below is an example from my site – I made a map of ski resorts in Colorado while planning a ski trip.

What’s really great about this tactic is that you can do it for just about anything. If there is a conference coming to town, make a map of restaurants and coffee shops near the event venue and hotels. You can also do this for local points of interest related to your industry such as bike trails, running routes, breweries, historic landmarks, or simply a collection of local points of interest for tourists.

Note, in the above code that is edited, we have added attribution to your homepage.

Once you have your map and embed code, reach out to local blogs and organizations that would be interested in the info and give them the embed code. Remember, you need to tell them what benefit this map provides for their readers or members.

YouTube Videos

Like the map tactic above, you can shoot a quick video to help people with something – either explain a topic, provide a review, or show someone how to do something. Then grab the YouTube embed code and make it link back to your site.

To do this yourself, simply append your homepage attribution and link to the page on your site the video appears on.

Once you’ve got the embed code edited, you just have to reach out to local people who’d be interested, just like with the map.

Local Bloggers Love Reviews

Local Bloggers are overlooked all the time by the big companies looking to give away free stuff. Find some local bloggers in your area and ask them to review your company. If you’re a restaurant offer them a complimentary meal for two and as long as you deliver a decent meal you should get a great review and some links. If you’re a store, offer them a product to review. As long as you don’t give them something cheap (<$50), they will probably be really excited.

Testimonials

Testimonials help everyone, right? Who doesn’t want to appear credible? Odds are you use services all the time. Offer a testimonial to the people you’ve hired or work with. Have you moved recently? Write a testimonial for your moving company and real estate agent. Do you use an office supply company? What about a chiropractor, printer, marketing agency, or computer repair service? Write them a review.

All you have to do is write your business under your name and link your business back to your site.

Local Magazines

Reach out to a local magazine in your area and ask if you can contribute a one off piece. The smaller magazines will typically welcome the added content. Write about whatever you want – either a topic you’re passionate about or teach people to do something related to your business. In your bio make sure you link back to your site!

Those are my seven link building tactics for small and local businesses, what are yours?